Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story isn’t a mere remake of the 1961 film or a filmic version of the 1957 stage musical in which a love affair between two teenagers divided by rival New York gangs, the Sharks and the Jets, ends in tragedy. Instead, it is a layering of theatrical devices, a Hollywood riff… Continue Reading »
What were the most popular stories this year on the Shakespeare & Beyond blog? Posts about love, coffee, and Ian McKellen made the top five.
During the covid-19 pandemic, two methods of escape for me have been Shakespeare and depictions of fictional catastrophes, so you can imagine my excitement when I learned that a novel that combines both — Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven — had been adapted into a miniseries. Station Eleven depicts a catastrophic global pandemic that… Continue Reading »
Duke Ellington includes “musical sonnets” in his 12-song Shakespeare jazz suite, Such Sweet Thunder. Learn more about this 1957 milestone in the story of jazz and Shakespeare from an interview with Douglas Lanier.
Austin Tichenor explores the copious Shakespearean echoes in HBO’s Succession series, in which the Shakespearean actor Brian Cox plays a key role.
Carla Della Gatta writes about Baz Luhrmann’s movie Romeo + Juliet, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, which became an indelible version for Gen X, Gen Y, and even Gen Z. In homage to West Side Story, it Latin-izes the Capulets, including Tybalt, played by John Leguizamo.
Austin Tichenor explores some surprising parallels between “Ted Lasso” and Shakespeare’s comedies, then tops off the post with paired quotes from both.
Sixty years old this week, the 1961 movie West Side Story, based on the acclaimed Broadway musical inspired by Romeo and Juliet, also became a de facto representation of US Latinx in musicals for many years.
Shakespeare is woven into the culture of the British Caribbean, with a special emphasis on Caliban and The Tempest–but does he reflect the colonial past, influence anti-colonial authors, or both? Scholars Giselle Rampaul and Barrymore A. Bogues traced his complex role in a classic Shakespeare Unlimited interview.
How do Shakespeare’s plays reflect a life filled with plague outbreaks, asks Austin Tichenor — and do we see his plays in new ways now?
